Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Creationism Notes Refuted, Part 2

I've already covered the intro, human transitionals and Noah's flood portions of my sister's school creationism notes. Next up is dinosaurs, dating methods and the age of the earth. But her notes also included a printout of an article by Brian Thomas called "No Fruit Fly Evolution Even after 600 Generations," which can be found here. He claims that no evolution was observed in three long-term scientific experiments involving bacteria and fruit flies. In doing so, he blatantly misrepresents their findings; it's hard to tell if he's lying or just really dumb. Here is one response, but I'll summarize the article's errors below.

In the first experiment, the scientists collected mutant stains of fruit flies in order to identify the genes for body development (which turned out to be similar to corresponding genes in other animals in a way that supports evolution). They were trying to get deformed fly embryos, yet Thomas falsely says they wanted to "document...evolution in action," and accidentally ended up with deformities, which showed "that fruit flies could not evolve." Next Thomas claims that the E. coli in the Lenski experiment were "hobbled by accumulated mutations, and the only changes that occurred were degenerative." No evidence is provided for this, and in fact the E. coli evolved several useful features, including the ability to breed 75% faster and to eat citrate.

Finally, there's the titular "600 generation" experiment. Scientists succeeded in getting fruit flies to develop 20% more quickly in the human equivalent of just 12,000 years, although some other traits were negatively affected. Thomas complains that the genes had not yet become "fixed" in the population, and though he mentions the authors' suggestion that not enough time may have elapsed for this to occur, he doesn't actually respond to this possibility (plus, genes may not need to be fixed in sexually reproducing populations at all). Overall, the article is a hopeless mess of confusion, mistakes and baseless assertions.

Now then, on to the notes.

Dinosaurs

It's not clear whether the teacher thinks actual winged, fire-breathing dragons have existed in the recent past, or just dinosaurs. On the one hand, the notes mention that the word "dragon" was used a few centuries ago to refer to dinosaurs—a fair point. But then they turn around and cite Isaiah 14:29 and its "fiery flying serpent" as evidence. They're really sending mixed messages about precisely what level of crazy they're willing to endorse.

Notes: Post-flood dinosaurs went extinct due to climate and human hunting.

Answer: I find it highly doubtful that well over 1,000 species—covering a wide range of sizes and niches (including air, land and sea)—could have died out that fast.

N: There are many stories about dragons, including Bible references (note: KJV).

A: And? There are also stories about Bigfoot, Nessie, krakens, UFOs and so on. Heck, there are entire fields of pseudoscience called cryptozoology and ufology. Are those things all real because there are stories about them? (Also, dragon myths were likely inspired by actual dinosaur fossils, just as giant squids inspired kraken myths.)

N: In Daniel 14:22, Daniel kills a dragon the Babylonians were worshipping.

N: A dictionary from 1946 called dragons "rare" rather than "mythological."

A: Uh... huh. So 60-odd years ago there were still a few dragons hanging around? Is this for real? Do the people teaching this have brain damage or something?

...Ahem.

Anyway, this seems to be the entry in question:

"Now Rare" quite obviously refers to usage of the word "dragon" to mean "a huge serpent." The phrase's formatting (capitalized and italicized to distinguish it from the definition itself) and the second listed definition ("A fabulous [i.e. mythical] animal...") both confirm this.

N: Soft tissue has been discovered in dinosaur bones.

A: Not necessarily, and even if they did, it still doesn't indicate recent fossilization.

A: There were numerous problems with that project, and tons of scientific studies disagree. My personal favorite detail is that "radioactive decay at a rate fast enough to permit a young earth would have produced enough heat to melt the earth."

N: Certain mammoths yield differing dates for different parts of their bodies.

A:Wow. Seriously? Okay, look. The fact is that population growth rates fluctuate wildly: war, disease, famine and natural disasters kill people off, and innovations such as agriculture and medicine allow them to flourish. This is what the actual population curve looks like.

N: Too few supernovas (just 300)!

A:Nope. And here are all the ones we've found so far—notice that there are way more than 300, and the number discovered per year has recently exploded.

I am continually amazed by how abysmal these arguments are. At times it's like they've scraped clean through the bottom of the barrel and just keep on digging. To think that parents are paying the school thousands of dollars a year for their kids to be taught this stuff.

8 comments:

But, that simply does not make sense, since it is a part of the #1 definition for the word. I found this explanation of dictionary formatting online:

"When a word has multiple definitions, the definitions are numbered...Note that the definitions tend to be ordered according to their use or prevalence."(Source: http://www.uhv.edu/ac/study/pdf/dictionary.entries.pdf)

It doesn't make sense to say that what tends to be the most used or prevalent definition for the word is also called "now rare". If that were the case, it would likely be the last definition given - not the first.

Sure...I'm sure you're right. Those dictionary publishers do love constantly switching around the format for dictionaries. Really Dude? Really? Modern day online dictionaries use the same formatting as every old dictionary I've ever seen.

...Yeah...just so you know, I don't really care what your opinion is of God's commandments. I just wanted to make sure you had heard them. I'm glad to hear God has sent others before me to let you know. At least you won't be able to say that you had no idea what you were supposed to do when you stand before Him. Ganesha doesn't exist, but Christ does, and you have made yourself His enemy.

can you explain why we have a conscience ? why is murder wrong ? why do we feel bad about things we do ? if we are just another animal who evolved like everything else isn't it just survival of the fittest ? if we are just a chemical accident why is it bad to get rid of another chemical accident?In my opinion it's because we are not just another animal i believe we were created by God .But hey, believe what you want

Your questions can be divided into two categories: One deals with why we are moral, the other with why we should be moral.

We have a conscience due to a combination of evolution and enculturation. For an explanation of how our moral sense evolved, see this post.

As for why we should be moral, what's certain is that due to the Euthyphro dilemma, God is not a proper basis for a moral system. So at the very least, secular moral theories aren't worse than theistic ones. And to give just one (vastly oversimplified) reason for behaving morally toward each other: In general, it increases the quality of life of everyone involved.